Leaving city life one faux pas at a time, and mulling it over as it goes.

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Beam The Wheat Up, Scotty

I’ve always thought I have a good awareness of the source of my food, and I’ve been proud of myself for this – or of my parents I suppose. Lambs in the fields on holiday were very cute and fluffy and sweet. And tasty. Pigs were funny and to be laughed at when I was little, and they made delicious bacon and sausages. While away on my gap yahh, I lived for a short time with a Nicaraguan family. My ‘brothers’ lassoed a goat and tied it to a tree, and my ‘mother’ slaughtered it. The next morning the top half of the goat’s head was hanging off one of the bamboo poles that made up the shower as I washed; I walked through the ‘kitchen’, ducking under the intestines to do so; I walked past the brain sat on a rough wooden shelf by the door; and sat down to a breakfast of beans, rice, egg and fresh goat. Yet despite this ‘awareness’, I’ve never considered is the origin of the ingredients and the sheer scale of the production process. A friend recently introduced me to the TV programme ‘How It’s Made’, which showed how during the manufacturing process of Canadian ‘Sticky Buns’, an entire sack of ground cinnamon is emptied into the mixing vat – a spice that I use a teaspoon at a time. I visited Sir Pheasant’s Farm a second time recently, actually getting to see it in action, and this was when I realised how big everything involved in farming is; I’ve never even tried to imagine it before.

I had my first experience driving a tractor, and believe me when I say that a tractor is much, much bigger than a car, particularly if the car you’re used to driving is a little Pug (a 107) and the largest car you’ve driven is a 306. The tractor wheels come up to my waist, you need a set of steps to climb into the cab, and even the steering wheel is about three times bigger than in my little car. It’s also hugely less sensitive; to turn even a small amount requires one to virtually spin the steering wheel like a top (I’ll admit I’m exaggerating for dramatic effect). I did like that fact that you don’t need to press the clutch to change gear – you just click a button with your right hand (at least on the tractor I was driving, a Ford New Holland) but then there are many many more gears than on my car. That said, all of the ones I used at least were the equivalent only of first or perhaps second gear, i.e. ‘slow’. Once used to the giant machine, and driving around a field in it, only then did I realise quite how big an acre is. Consider that farmers have to dig, plough, drill (to me this translates as ‘sow’) and fertilise the fields by driving over them, not to mention all the various sprays. Combine this with the tortoise speed of the tractors and whatnot that they drive while doing so, and you see quite how labour intensive farming is. The vehicles may be big, but the fields are much, much bigger.

On Tuesday morning, a man called to make arrangements that someone would come and pick up some wheat later. If he could make it, it would be early evening. If not, he would come the next morning – at about 5am. Luckily for me, reluctant as I was to get up before sunrise, he arrived around 5pm so I got to see the wheat being loaded. The truck that turned up seemed about three times as long as my house is wide. This could be another exaggeration, but honestly I’m not sure and wouldn’t be surprised if it were true. Before the truck/lorry arrived, we moved the combine harvester out of the way – though I didn’t drive it, for the sake of the rest of the farm; the wheels on that are bigger than me, and it requires not steps but a ladder to get into the cab. Here I learned that the engine on a combine harvester is Loud with a capital L. I’ve decided that the reason so many farmers shoot is either because they’re so deaf from the combines that gun fire next to their ears is nothing, or so they can reuse their ear defenders from shooting when farming. The loading then began, as the wheat was transferred to the enormous lorry, described by its misguided driver as a ‘wagon’. He obviously long ago mastered the art of understatement. The teleporter was kitted out with a big metal bucket on the front – and by ‘big’ I mean it could hold about 1 ½ tonnes of wheat per scoop, so a little bigger than the 5l bucket my mum keeps in the garden. 29 tonnes of wheat were being sold, and with1 ½ tonnes moved per journey, the little teleporter (and when I say ‘little’ I mean in comparison to the tractor and combine harvester) moved back and forth with its farmer in the driving seat more time than I could count.

The teleporter is a piece of farm machinery I have taken issue with. After someone described one to me a while ago, I forgot its name, and later mistakenly referred to it as a ‘Transporter’ which caused much amusement amongst my more agriculturally-minded friends. But I have to back up my mistake. From what I’ve seen, a teleporter is used to move things from point A to point B. And in doing this, it transports its load. It does not, in any sense of the word, teleport it. No Star-Trek-esque equipment vanished the wheat from the shed only for it to miraculously appear moments later in the ‘wagon’. No Willy Wonka style laser was employed to dissect it molecule by molecule at point A, and beam them through space to reassemble at Point B. No, the inaccurately named teleporter transports, and therefore even if it is officially wrong (though descriptively accurate) to call it a Transporter, I justdon’t see the joke. But I will give the farming community the benefit of the doubt, note it down as part of my Country Education and assume that the understanding of the humour will come to me through time. I am thrown back 12 months or more to a conversation about tractors with Sir Pheasant’s Farmer where I described a tractor as having a ‘sticky out pokey thing’ on the front; a description that still haunts me to this day and I fear I will never be allowed to forget. Hopefully, eventually, whether in five or fifteen years time, I will have found the hidden humour in the teleporter/transporter confusion, and also learned the name of the sticky out pokey thing (I still don’t know what this is called. It’s sort of like a huge tow bar, but on the front. If you can enlighten me, please do = you can comment below!)

When the teleporter was finished and the wagon full, the driver secured a tarpaulin over the top, produced a flimsy paper receipt that was the trade for the wheat (that would soon be swapped again for a cheque for so many thousands of pounds) and drove off. Looking into the shed, the 29 tonnes he had taken appeared to have made little more than a large dent in store – there was so much left. The wheat that was taken will be ground down and added to by thousands more tonnes, to be baked into cakes, biscuits, bread and God only knows what else, which will be sold in supermarkets and corners across the country. So when I think I know the origins of my food – because I know how to make bread and cakes, and I know that animals become my food – I have so very little idea of the quantities and scale of the manufacturing processes. I can’t picture how many thousands of cows and bulls must be reared to keep our fridges stocked in mince and our restaurants in steak; how many eggs must be laid for the ingredients in the food we buy in the supermarkets, as well as the boxes of them for sale. And so I have concluded, farming’s quite a big deal really.